


Tactical Maneuvers, or, neither timid nor tame

by wintercreek



Series: ATA Sorority [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Coming Out, F/F, Fraternities & Sororities, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-06
Updated: 2010-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-07 01:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Another of) The one where they're sorority girls. All the things that can happen on a rainy Tuesday night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tactical Maneuvers, or, neither timid nor tame

It's in the spring of their junior year when Joan clatters down the stairs to the basement and throws open the lounge door, roaring, "What is going on down here?"

Meredith looks up sheepishly from where she's apparently taken the kitchen door off its hinges and laid it across something to make a jury-rigged table. Joan tilts her head and sees the cinder blocks under the door. _Yeah,_ she thinks, _because _that_ won't fall over halfway through a dance party._

The bass is so loud that Joan had felt the floor of their room shaking. It's ten times worse down here, and Joan can see the liquid sloshing ever-so-slightly in the liquor bottles Mer's lined up on the door-table. Despite this, Mer's hands are steady as she mixes a drink and holds it out to Joan. "Uh, here?" she offers. Like the alcohol is adequate compensation for the irritation Joan's feeling.

"Mer," Joan sighs, "I have a final tomorrow morning. Today is _Tuesday_. Why are you having a raucous party on a Tuesday night?" She takes the drink and sips at it; it's perfect, as always, a fuzzy navel with just the right amount of fuzz.

Mer shrugs. "It wasn't my idea. I have a final tomorrow too, you know, although given how comically easy that whole biology class has been I doubt I'll need to do any studying. Soft sciences," she snorts.

Joan cannot wait for the day they have their own apartment, somewhere far off campus, and Mer can blow off studying and sleeping in the ATA house while Joan's bedroom stays blissfully quiet and her floor blissfully still. It's not fair that she can't study, can't sleep, and can't even get a dance with her girlfriend out of this. She rubs her temples and drinks some more. "Whose idea was this?"

"The seniors." Mer busies herself with her own drink, a complicated one she calls "Screwing the Cabana Boy." It seems to involve lots of vodka; other than that it's different every time. There's a crowd of sophomores building off to Joan's left, absently shaking their hips to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and eyeing the line-up of bottles. They aren't technically old enough to be drinking, but that's never stopped them before. Mer waters down their drinks anyway.

"Of course." Joan closes her eyes and hopes for strength. This part of sorority life she could do without, sometimes. She has to go back out into the hall and come in the other door to get in the kitchen. It's worth it when she sees that there's something better than the bag of pretzels she'd planned to steal: Carmen's made fried tortillas, their dusting of sugar and cinnamon almost sparkling in the fluorescent lights. She smiles sympathetically as Joan piles strips into a folded paper towel and beats a strategic retreat.

She gets as far as she can from the lounge, carrying her greasy and delicious stash up to the third floor and all the way down to the north end of the house where the tiny study room hides with its gabled slant to the walls. The bass from the party dwindles to a faint thud out here, and Joan opens the window so she can smell the nearly-summer rain coming down. It's warm outside, May turning into June, despite the late hour. She presses her forehead lightly to the window screen, then sits back up and eats her tortilla strips. Carmen has got to teach her that recipe.

An hour later, Joan's read her way through part of someone's Shakespeare omnibus and finished off the generous fuzzy navel Mer gave her. The door creaks open, and Joan looks up from her beanbag chair. It's Sam, her blonde hair wet from the rain, somehow standing tall despite the enormous backpack on her shoulders. "You mind?" she asks.

She's not who Joan wishes had come through the door, but Sam's all right. "Be my guest." Joan gestures grandly at the table and chairs across from her. "My relatively quiet retreat is your relatively quiet retreat."

Sam drops her bag in one chair and falls heavily into another. "I don't know why they insist on closing the library during finals. Other schools have 24-hour libraries. I think if Taco Bell can do it, our library ought to be able to." She rummages in the depths of her massive pack and comes up with an iPod and portable speakers. "However, I can play music with no headphones here. Folk okay by you?"

Joan smiles. "Absolutely." Mer calls her a 'country girl' when she plays folk music, and no amount of explaining will get the distinction across between twangy guys in hats with dead dogs and the sweetness of a lady with a violin telling a story with all her soul.

Sam puts on Tracy Grammer and pulls out a laptop, a stack of books and notes thicker than Joan's thigh, and a determined look. It isn't long before she's covered the four-person table. From the looks of things she's writing a poli-sci paper about the role of the military in international relations. Some days, Joan is really happy to be a math major. She's surprised, though, when Sam looks up and turns the laptop toward her invitingly. "You're a history minor, aren't you?"

Joan nods.

"Would you come take a look at this? It really needs to be read over." The corners of Sam's mouth turn up, hopeful. "Please?"

Since she's obviously not studying for her own final, Joan agrees. They fall to discussing force versus negotiation versus covert ops, Joan pulling out examples of military involvement gone wrong to counter Sam's insistence on the merits of police actions. Joan switches sides and argues for assassinations and regime changes for a while, just to mess with Sam's head and get her to concede that not all military intervention is altruistic. They both agree that honesty is an underrated negotiating tactic, and that dictators are universally bad news. It's a pleasure to fight good-naturedly with her about things, especially since she doesn't turn bright pink and start shrieking the way Meredith does.

Joan starts thinking about some recon and maybe a little tactical strike of her own, if the party's still carrying on the basement. She bumps shoulders with Sam and wishes her luck on the revisions to her paper, then pads down the hall to the south end of the house. It's quiet, thank goodness. Joan won't have to remember, after all, which switch in the circuit breaker kills the sound system.

Mer's in their second floor room, sweaty from dancing and flushed with alcohol. She smells musky with sweat and looks delicious. Joan smiles at her.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure I look absurd," Mer says. "I'm about to go shower, I promise."

"Aww, don't do that," Joan drawls. "I had plans to get you messier before you clean up."

Meredith looks poleaxed. "I thought you were mad at me. I thought you needed to sleep before your final tomorrow!"

"Too late now," Joan tells her. "I'll just have to get by on six hours and some coffee." She steps closer to Meredith, invades her space, captures her hands. "Come on."

Joan tugs Mer down the stairs and out the side door, drags her laughing into the parking lot and lets the rain pour down on them. They're only wearing flip flops and the streams running down to the storm drain cascade over their toes. Joan squints at Meredith in the blue glow of a safety light, then tilts her head toward the dark shelter of the trees past the end of the lot.

They slip into the shadows and kiss there, warm rain sliding over their faces. Joan holds on to Meredith's hips, then tucks her hands into Mer's back pockets and flexes her fingers around Mer's ass. Meredith breaks away to laugh. "You're such an ass woman."

"I like how soft it is!" Joan says. "Anyway, it's easier to grope that than your breasts while we're kissing. Strategy."

A flash on the horizon startles them out of their next kiss, but Mer counts a good twenty seconds before the roll of thunder follows so they take their time slipping back to the house. They hold hands across the parking lot and delace their fingers reluctantly at the door of the house.

Sam and Elizabeth are sitting on the stairs talking when Mer and Joan round the corner of the landing, soaking wet. Elizabeth raises one eyebrow. "Caught out in the parking lot?" she asks.

"Yes, uh, we were just, uh," Mer begins before turning helplessly to Joan. Joan looks at Sam and thinks about the inadvisability of covert action, about the disarming power of honesty in negotiations.

"Necking," Joan says. "We were just necking in the rain." She holds Elizabeth's eye contact and tries to look more confidant than defiant. She's not afraid - she has Meredith no matter what - but she's not certain what reaction they'll get.

Elizabeth gives them a small smile. "Hot," she says. "Maybe Ronon and I should try that sometime." When Mer lets out an obvious sigh of relief Elizabeth rolls her eyes. "You honestly thought I'd have a problem with this?" she asks.

Meredith sputters. "It's - I - Some -"

"Like we hadn't guessed," Sam says. "Right, Madam President?"

"Right," Elizabeth confirms. "A good sorority president knows everything. I've had the sexual orientation non-discrimination module ready for a while; you let me know if you have any trouble with anyone, and I'll workshop the hell out of 'em."

Joan leans over and kisses the shock off Mer's face, just because she can. "Awesome," she says once the tension has slipped out of Meredith's neck.

"Anyway, this paper's not going to submit itself," Sam says. "I better go do my final edits. Sleep well, ladies." She disappears down the stairs.

Elizabeth walks the rest of the way up to the second floor with them and turns down the hall toward the president's suite. Joan stops her with a soft word. "Hey," she says, "when did you figure it out?"

"You two?" Elizabeth grins. "Joan, I was your freshman RA long before I was your sorority president. You think I didn't notice when you were suddenly inseparable behind closed doors rather than inseparable in the hallway?" She leans in and gives Joan a hug, despite the fact that Joan is dripping wet and terminally awkward at emotional gestures. "Don't worry," she adds seriously. "Sam's going to be president next year. She'll workshop the hell out of 'em too, if anyone needs it."

Joan feels something in her relax all the way. She didn't think she'd been nervous about this, but she'd evidently been wrong. It must show on her face, because Elizabeth winks at her.

They say good night and Joan lets herself into her room to strip off her wet clothes. She and Mer decide without discussing it to share a shower stall. It feels bold to do it now, so soon after finding out that Elizabeth and Sam know. But it's also three in the morning: nearly everyone's asleep, and they need the comforting glide of each other's soapy hands to drain the adrenaline and soothe them towards rest. They steal a few kisses under the spray and wash each other's hair.

When they're dry and pajama-clad, they curl together into one tiny twin bed and Meredith falls asleep smiling. Joan can't bring herself to begrudge the seniors their Tuesday night party when the ultimate outcome has been this night with its pleasant surprises and the clean scent of Meredith's hair tickling her nose. She consciously slows her breathing and drops off to sleep, not worried about tomorrow's econ exam or their future.


End file.
